


Snow After Fire

by Meduseld



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Feelings, Helping Each Other, Kings & Queens, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Rebuilding, Scars, Which is what Thranduil's scar is basically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:08:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23973538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meduseld/pseuds/Meduseld
Summary: Bard and Thranduil begin to rebuild.
Relationships: Bard the Bowman/Thranduil
Comments: 12
Kudos: 62





	Snow After Fire

**Author's Note:**

> I started this in 2014, left it literally midsentence, rediscovered it because of quarantine cabin fever, and finally finished it. Enjoy.

Gold that has been brooded over by a dragon is cursed. But Dale and Erebor cannot rebuild without it.

Dwarves have come in droves to the Lonely Mountain, and Bard's people are steeling themselves for a long winter ahead. He suspects this is what sways Gandalf's heart, more than Thranduil's words or Bard's pleas or Dain's threats. 

Wizards, he has come to learn, are strange but not unfeeling creatures. 

It is mostly the children, both Bard’s and others, he thinks, that make Gandalf agree to scout the inside of the mountain with a mixed contingent, an appraisal that will later lead to a bloodless division of spoils. If all goes well. 

He has to remind himself of that, how he has come to know Gandalf and how necessary he has proven to be, when the brown wizard comes. Gandalf argues that he is the only one that can lift such ill power. 

Tilda argues that the man has bird droppings on his face, at least until she sees the sled rabbits and becomes too delighted to argue. 

And Bard's own reservations lift slightly at the way the wizard, Radagast, tells her their names and instructs her on how to pet them without causing them discomfort. 

Still, the only real balm to his doubts is that Thranduil will accompany them into the bowels of the mountain. 

Radagast seems gentle, and Gandalf is slowly becoming known to him, but Thranduil he trusts. 

Without reservation, and how could he not? Thranduil had put the glowing Arkenstone into his fisherman's hands and let him slip it into a ragged coat long past its best years. He had Bard as his right hand for war and council, gave his ear whenever he asked.

He puts that same coat on the morning the small company crosses the ruined gate, headed towards the mountain, like a small charm for protection.

Perhaps there was still a little luck left in it, even after seeing him through battle. And it helps with the chill in the air that grows stronger by the minute.

It takes them seven days to return with the results of their scouting. 

Bard keeps busy in the meantime, learning to breathe underneath the burden of an unwanted crown. 

Dain pulls him into his tent a few times, the Arkenstone hanging from his chest, now. Bard cannot say he misses its weight. 

The dwarf is tiresome but well intentioned and Bard is as civil as he can be, given that they will be neighbors and trade partners. 

He is in the low ceilinged tent, speaking to the dwarf made king, when the company's return is announced. 

Bard runs out like he’s being chased.

The wizards are in the main courtyard, Radagast talking to his rabbits as if they were men. "It's gone well" Gandalf smiles when their eyes meet. Bard doesn't answer, looking around for Thranduil. 

Surely he would not have left without finishing the work, without saying farewell. Especially that.

Gandalf's smile widens at his discomfort. What he says next feels both correct and entirely untrue: "Lord Thranduil is waiting in your quarters. Something he must tell you."

Bard should thank him. And Radagast. And settle things with Dain.

Instead he turns on his heel and practically races up the steps. It’s foolhardy, there’s already been a light dusting of snow, making them slippery.

But all he can think of is the Elven King, the North he has always looked too, every time with more reason. The one that has made all this madness, the new weight of this crown, bearable, the one who has always trusted in Bard, more than he himself ever has.

A kingdom, a _life,_ without the Elven King does not interest him. He can admit that, if only inside his own mind.

Because Bard knew love when he felt it, and he did. 

He wondered if Thranduil knew. He wondered if Thranduil would care. 

But that didn’t matter to his heart. It had its own reasons, and didn’t compare them with the reasons of his head. 

All Bard can think of is that he knows that elves can be injured, killed. He knows that Dwarvish mountains can hold things more terrible than dragons and gold sickness. And he knows that he and the wizard could greatly disagree about the definition of well.

But Thranduil _is_ in his quarters, with his back to the door. He turns, as gracefully as ever, at Bard’s entrance, but he looks so very, very tired. 

His skin seems thin and discolored, like the vellum in his books, more valuable than gold, that he used to let Bard look at, deep in his forest, what feels like lifetimes ago. 

Histories, he’d said. They’d looked like fairy stories to Bard. The oldest kind of magic.

“What’s happened?” Bard says, trying to keep his voice down. He fails, but Thranduil huffs, like it was exactly what he was expecting. Like it’s a familiarity he craved.

“Nothing worth noting. The corruption seems lifted, but the work is not done. It will take time, but there is time enough, and it will require many hands, but there are hands enough” Thranduil says, his voice only half as haughty as it usually is, silver eyes closing like simply saying that has drained him despite all the strength of the elves.

It frightens him.

Bard grabs his shoulders, too afraid now to think of the disrespect he implies.

Under the fine cloth, Thranduil’s feels too thin, too slumped, _defeated_.

“Do not tell me what you think I want to hear. You are unwell, even children could see that” Bard says, hating how desperate, how rubbed raw he sounds. 

Thranduil shakes off his shoulder with a simple shrug like Bard’s hands weigh nothing to him. They probably don’t. 

“ _Your_ children you mean?” Thranduil says, starting to sound like himself again, righteous and angry, brushing off Bard’s concern like it means nothing to him. It probably doesn’t.

Bard takes a step back, ready to apologize.

The feeling lasts only for a moment, before Thranduil folds back in on himself. He seems worn to the bone. For a horrifying instant, Bard thinks he might even be the one to apologize.

He would risk all that and more just to keep him _safe_ , and alive, here and hale and hearty.

“Is there anything to be done? Do you wish me to call for the wizar-” “ _No_ ” Thranduil says, imperious as ever, no matter the darkness gathering under his eyes. 

“No, I have no need of those charlatans. Or anyone else” he adds, his breathing too harsh. 

No elf would be winded by so few words, regal though they may be. And they all talk that way, from the footmen to the courtiers, Bard’s found.

“Sit then” Bard says, and hard as it may be to take Thranduil’s level glare, he sinks into the uncomfortable wooden seat someone set in his quarters. Sigrid, most likely. His eldest in heart and mind, as well as blood.

Thranduil settles like a falling moonbeam, like a leaf on water, as he has every time Bard has seen him, but there’s something unsteady in it, too. Something alarming. 

A fight won’t pull it out of him, whatever sickness is eating at him, Bard knows.

And he would have held it close to his chest in front of the others. Especially the wizards.

Sometimes he thinks only the two of them see each other, in the whole of the world, plainly and as they are. 

It’s why he picked Bard for this, whatever it may be, however it may end.

“What did you see in there?” Bard says, almost to himself, turning to make sure there’s a good fire in the hearth. He needs the distraction and they need the warmth.

It’s something almost funny, the way so many old buildings in Dale are mostly hale and hearty, at least in the back quarters. His body doesn’t know the difference between the heat of this fire and the one in Lake Town on his knees, his weight on his heels. 

Only his heart does, ringing from the screams of the ones that left this once cursed place. 

Smaug himself, his presence and existence, was more desolation than what he wreaked. Who could ever live under such a shadow?

It’s almost like Thranduil hears his thoughts, or has seen enough of the dragon’s wake these days, and of Bard in general, to mirror them.

“What I expected to find. The ravages of a dragon. Nothing unseen before. It was only-” and at this he cuts off, clearly out of sorts and Bard turns back, still balanced on his ankles. 

Perhaps it is only because his face is level with Thranduil’s lap, perhaps it is because there is only so much any living thing can take on its own, no matter what the nature of that thing may be. 

But the Elven King is so undone as to let it show and make Bard’s heart lurch. He is beginning to think he did not so much choose Bard’s quarters as flee to them. The one place no one else will venture.

Thranduil’s eyes are shut, his hand clenched in his fine silver robe, though Bard knows enough now to tell it is hardly his best, rather it is the hardy one for this sort of trek. Whatever he is holding back, he is losing ground.

Bard has never seen him like this, not in his forest halls or in the midst of battle. He does what he did then. Offered himself, for whatever he could do.

Cautiously, he reaches out, the heat of his hand, hovering over Thranduil’s, moon pale and shaking. 

Like a serpent, sudden and strong, it snaps over and opens, closing just as fast on Bard’s wrist. 

He doesn’t shirk from it, the bruises it must be calling up, just waits.

Thranduil breaks, like a bough snapping under the weight of snow.

“It was the _smell_. That dragon stench, on every surface of the place, nearly an inch thick…” and Thranduil’s face transforms with a tortured hiss.

Marred and devastated, the scars on his soul laid bare and festering. The sinew red and strained, thick with ooze. 

Bard is not horrified. He is not repulsed. Not at this, not at what he knows himself, intimately, carved the same way in the secret chambers of his heart.

It was wound, old but so precise, so personal, that no amount of time or care would even make it fully heal. It would always be ready to bleed.

Bard slipped his fingers, calloused but careful, on the unmarred side of Thranduil’s face, fitting them together like rudder and steer. 

He let Thranduil shake, hide his hurt against Bard’s neck, strong bargeman’s hands holding him steady.

Bard might not yet know how to lead a people or rule a realm but he knew this well enough, the secret roads of comfort and care, the way even the smallest things would seem vast as the night sky. 

His knees didn’t hurt, and his arms didn’t ache, even as he took more and more of Thranduil’s weight.

It didn’t surprise him. He knew how love could give you strength to hold the ones you cherished most in your arms. No matter if they were your wife’s body to burial, or three squirming babes in a rocking boat, or a heavy king of Mirkwood with a bleeding face. 

“Thank you” he murmured, into Bard’s hair, sometime after the room grew dark to see in while the fire grew weak. 

They pulled away from each other reluctantly, Thranduil rearranging the golden and gossamer strands of his hair around his now unmarked face. 

Yet still the damage was underneath, and always would be. Bard knew it now, and always would. He could almost trace the lines of it, skittering over Thranduil’s noble jaw.

His face, flawless as pearl, tilted carefully, as if waiting to hear what Bard would say. Or ask.

But there was no need for questions, as far as he felt, but he would be ready to hear if told.

“Rest now” Bard said instead, without realizing what it would sound like, that Thranduil would look laughable, if he ever managed to look anything but majestic, in his little lumpy bed. 

Nothing he fears happens. Thranduil only nods, tracing the tips of his cold fingers over the bones of Bard’s face, looking deep in his eyes. 

They could see it each other, all the way to the bottom of it now. Nothing unknown between them now. There was no greater comfort.

“Yes. For this night” he finally says, and Bard can feel something like relief. Before he can wonder what he will tell the Elven King’s guardsmen. Perhaps they will pretend no surprise.

“Tomorrow we must resume the work, in the mountain” he adds and it sinks like a stone in Bard’s stomach.

“You don’t have to, please you could rest-” Bard tries, because he knows he will fail.

“I can, and I will” Thranduil commands. “So long as you are with me” he adds, his voice almost coming close to being unsure.

“Always” Bard says, revealing too much.

From the light, like dawn, coming over Thranduil’s face, it’s the right thing to say.

Then he teaches Bard true awe, by simply turning away, breathtakingly trusting, and readying for the sleep of the exhausted. In Bard’s bed, surging like molten silver, Thranduil wraps himself bedding and breathes deep.

And Bard, who has seen Dwarvish battle and Hobbit courage and struck a black arrow into the heart of a gold speckled dragon, feels something like awe and everything like love. 

The next morning, they ride for the Mountain together, the wizards struggling to keep up behind them.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [a quote by the man himself](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/248896-so-comes-snow-after-fire-and-even-dragons-have-their).


End file.
